


Gathering Rosebuds and Mixing Metaphors

by Lily_Padd_23



Category: The West Wing
Genre: Confessions, Cute, Episode Related, Episode: s01e16, Episode: s01e16 20 Hours in L.A., Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Kissing, M/M, soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-05
Updated: 2019-03-05
Packaged: 2019-11-12 05:24:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18004649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lily_Padd_23/pseuds/Lily_Padd_23
Summary: Alternate ending to 20 Hours in LA





	Gathering Rosebuds and Mixing Metaphors

Gathering Rosebuds and Mixing Metaphors 

by Lily Padd

 

       

        “Gather ye rosebuds, Josh,” Donna had taunted.

        “Donna, I am not going to knock on her door!” he had replied defiantly.

Five minutes later, as he waited in front of the door behind which the object of his affection stood, he tried to convince himself that Donna’s clucking wasn’t really the only reason he was here. If this actually ended up going somewhere tonight, he refused to look back and tell people that it was because his beloved assistant made chicken noises at him.

        “I couldn’t knock on her door if I wanted to, I don’t have her room number,” he’d fumbled, feeling his face flush at the thought of Joey in her pajamas. He hadn’t had one of these schoolboy crushes in years. It wasn’t an unfamiliar feeling, just one he’d sort of figured was behind him.

        “Yes, you do!” Donna had said, waving the phone message back and forth. After fending off more of Donna’s teasing, he’d grabbed the little card with Joey’s room number on it and made his way to the elevators.

Turning the card around in his hand as the elevator doors closed, he’d heard a giggle, and it occurred to him that, being alone in the elevator and all, the giggling must have been coming from him. Donna was right. Joey may have come here with someone, but she could’ve said that for a lot of reasons. God she looked so pretty tonight, he’d thought, catching his own goofy grin reflected back at him in the elevators. Mostly, she was just so damn smart. She saw things in a way nobody else did. This crush had hit him _hard._

He’d tried to remember the last time the thought of someone made him giggle. He’d tried to remember what had stopped him from going out and gathering _those_ rosebuds. But then he’d tried to squash that thought down because certainly the only catalyst for a relationship worse than chicken clucking was Donna’s terrible literary analysis. He never wanted to admit it had worked on him.

And yet, it kind of had. Bobbing on his heels in the elevator, he’d found himself full of this retroactive regret for all the chances he could’ve taken before this one, before it was too late. He had never been a going-out-on-a-limb kind of guy. Not in his social live, anyway. He never took risks. The only time he’d ever act is if he knew it was a sure thing corroborated by a secondary source. He saved the grasping at straws, flying by the seat of his pants, and diving in balls-first approaches for work. He’d gone out on so many political limbs that he wasted his center of gravity to balance on those that related to his love life. He’d amended that thought in his head, because he’d never actually _been_ in love and certainly that was a prerequisite for having a love life. Well, he’d been in love once, he’d reminded himself, but he’d left those rosebuds un-gathered. Those rose bushes had more thorns than buds, he’d caught himself thinking and then immediately realized how stupid that sounded.

This time, he was resolute. He was going to go out on the limb of that rosebush even if he was too giddy to refrain from mixing metaphors. Right now, he was riding on the same adrenaline that was making him giggle like an idiot.

It had dawned on him that his trite analogies and inability to quit giggling might be a sign that he had somehow lost proper brain function, and this wasn’t as good an idea as it seemed. In time with the slowing of the elevator, he’d watched his own face fall as all the gleeful energy seeped from him. Suddenly, this had become very serious. The painful fluttering in his heart had reminded him why he’d never followed through before, and he’d reached to press the button to go back to his floor. Then the bell had dinged. It was like the sound effect for something switching in him. If he was going to do this, he’d determined, he was going to do this right.

So here he was, in front of the door, waiting for it to open and potentially change his life forever, wondering how long it could take somebody to walk across a hotel room. His toes wiggled in his shoes, and he fidgeted with a button on the sleeve of his black shirt, unable to quell his nervous energy.

But the door finally opened, and rather than cause his heart to skip a beat or trigger the violent stomach butterflies he was anticipating, it made his whole body relax. His hands stopped moving and his heart rate slowed back to normal, back to comfortable, back to home. Because standing there, wide-eyed and slightly breathless, he wasn’t remotely nervous anymore. Just completely and utterly certain.

        “Hey, Josh,” Sam said warmly tilting his head, ocean eyes peering at him behind his glasses. “What’s up?”

        “Oh, Sam,” was all Josh could muster for a moment. There had never been any thorns here.

        “You alright?” the corner of Sam’s mouth turned up fondly, a drop of shower water dripped from his bangs. Josh nodded swiftly, and Sam asked, “You wanna come in?” Josh nodded again, and Sam opened the door further, giving them space to both move into the room.

        “Some day, huh?” Sam sighed as he crossed back towards his bed and the piles of papers he was trying to get organized for packing. Josh just watched him for a moment. He wore a pair of black jeans, and the collar of a blue shirt poked out from beneath his Princeton sweatshirt. He was in his sock feet, which Josh found particularly endearing, and his hair was a little crumpled and damp from where he’d been visibly leaning against his headboard after his recent shower. He might giggle over Joey. He might blush at the thought of her in pajamas. But Sam dressed down and looking all cozy and wet rendered him a little bit dazed.

        “Uh-huh,” Josh finally replied when he got his bearings.

Sam chattered away, either oblivious or playing dumb to Josh’s gawking, “I’d venture to say that the fundraiser was a success, but we’re obviously going to have to talk to the President about…”

        “Sam… I— I’m sorry, Sam, I know we have a lot to debrief but let’s do tomorrow tomorrow, ‘kay?” Josh interrupted, his words surprising him a little. Sam turned around and looked at him funny before he went on, “I gotta tell you somethin’ and it’s time-sensitive.”

        “Okay…” Sam furrowed his brow a bit.

Josh just rambled on, “I mean it’s not time-sensitive at all, it has been true for ages now, and it’s gonna be true tomorrow, but I mean, Donna got me all hyped up so I feel like I probably need to tell you now while it still seems within the realm of possibility that I’ll actually.... tell you.”

        “So tell me!” Sam folded his arms and held back a chuckle.

Josh opened his mouth, about to say the words, but instead he just sputtered, “I mean, it’s not like the only reason I’m doing this now is because of Donna or anything, but she ignited the impetus and now I can’t shake the feeling that if I don’t say it now I won’t…”

        “Josh?” Sam cut him off quietly, his face softening into something Josh couldn’t pinpoint. Josh stopped short and Sam cocked his head affectionately, a gesture to steer him back on track. That was rich coming from Sam, Josh thought.

        “I have a crush on Joey Lucas...” Josh said bluntly. He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jeans, but still didn’t break Sam’s gaze.

        “I know that,” Sam conceded, his expression still anticipatory, silently asking _“and…”_

        “But I’m in love with you.”

Now Sam’s face blossomed into a full smile, his lips soft and thin, his cheeks round and rosy, “I know that, too,” he said.

Josh blinked and tipped his head forward a bit before quickly asking, “Y’do?” his face twisting with confusion.

        “Yeah!” Sam’s tender smile flashed into a toothy grin.

Josh just kept blinking for a little while before he remembered that his heartbeat was still completely steady. He wasn’t fidgeting. He wasn’t glancing away, subconsciously looking for an exit. This thing with Sam wasn’t going out on a limb, he thought to himself, feeling a new kind of grin appear on his face now. Sam was solid ground.

That’s why he wasn’t actually at all surprised when the next words out of his own mouth were a sure and confident, “And you’re in love with me, too?” It was only sort of a question. Sam just beamed back at him.

        _“And you’re in love with me, too,”_ Josh repeated emphatically, waiting for Sam to confirm what he already knew. Sam looked like he was about to laugh, and Josh stared at him, his own eyebrows expectedly raised now, but Sam couldn’t seem to get a word out through his Cheshire cat face. Josh mirrored Sam’s posture, crossing his arms and waiting playfully.

        “Oh, come on, Seaborn,” Josh broke, “You’re not gonna go all Han Solo on me, are you?”

Sam threw his head back now and laughed so hard it ricocheted off the walls and wrapped itself around Josh. Josh watched him, laughing too, but mostly laughing at how ridiculous he had been to ever be afraid of Sam. Not of Sam, of his feelings for Sam. Because as Sam collected his laughter, he dropped right back into that cheeky, adoring expression, like he was seeing how long he could test Josh’s restraint by not saying it. Like he wanted to drag out the _last moment_ that he had to hold this inside for as long as possible. Like he was savoring it.

Josh tried to play along, holding Sam’s eye contact, willing him to crack and say it before he had to ask again, but he couldn’t help himself. He finally blurted out, _“And you're in love with me, too?!?!”_

        “You really do need to be hit over the head, don’t you?” Sam teased.

        _“Sam!”_ Josh cried.

Sam’s incomprehensibly wide smile grew even wider. Josh thought about how the universe is infinite and expanding. Sam’s smile was like that. His love for Sam was like that: infinite yet expanding faster and faster.

        “Of course I’m in love with you, Josh!” Sam finally said, “I always have been.”

That floored him, “Always? Like, since when?”

        “Like, since 1985,” Sam’s smile just kept growing.

        “We met in 1985,” Josh noted, his own smile matching Sam’s.

        “We did.”

        “So you fell in love with me the year we met?” Josh was still trying to process this.

        “No, Josh,” Sam shook his head, his face slipping into a quiet sincerity, “I fell in love with you the day we met.”

        “Sam…” was all Josh could say. He gazed at those blue eyes on the other side of the room. He thought of all the times he’d looked into them. He tried to guess how many hours he had spent looking at them. And right now, it was like he was seeing them for the first time. But not really. It was like he was _understanding_ them for the first time. Understanding that all that color and light and beauty behind them wasn’t just the brilliance of his best friend, but his best friend’s love for him. Like he had been looking at the sea and only seeing the sun’s reflection and the waves and the foam, and now he could see the vast depths below all the way down to the ocean floor. He thought about the universe again and how even when you can’t see the stars, they’re still there. He really was mixing metaphors tonight.

        “So I love you,” he finally broke the silence.

        “Yes,” Sam said.

        “And you love me.”

        “Yes.”

        “We’re in love.”

        “Yes.”

        “We’re in love,” Josh echoed, getting used to the taste of it in his mouth.

        “We always have been,” Sam added, “That’s kind of our thing.”

        “So we’re in love,” Josh gave in to the urge to close some of the distance between him and Sam, taking a few small steps towards him.

        “We are in love, yes,” Sam nodded quickly, swallowing a little, seeming a fraction less anchored than he had before as Josh moved closer.

        “So what do we do now?” Josh paused after his third or fourth step. Only about a foot or two between them now.

        “Well, we have to catch a flight soon,” Sam suddenly sounded overly practical, but didn’t break their intense eye contact, “And we are both very tired. But I think at some point we should probably discuss forming some kind of romantic relationship.”

        “That seems like a pretty big conversation,” Josh felt his lips twinge into a smirk.

        “There are a lot of things we need to consider,” Sam said his breath catching as his glance moved from Josh’s eyes to his smirk and back to his eyes, “A lot of things we need to do.”

        “Can the first thing on that list be kissing you?” Josh asked, his voice low in the back of his throat.

        “That’s certainly not the worst proposition that has been put to me today,” Sam referenced the bizarre pitches from movie people he and CJ had endured at the fundraiser, “And it seems like the logical place to start,” Sam whispered now, shifting his weight back and forth from his right foot to his left. Josh placed his hands on each side of Sam’s face, which seemed to bring Sam back to his steadiness, back to comfortable, back to home.

        “Very logical,” Josh agreed, frozen in Sam’s gaze, unable to move more than to stroke his thumbs over Sam’s cheekbones.

In the end, it was Sam who finally drew their lips together. For a sweet moment that tasted like Colgate and coffee, they stood still, eyes closed, lips slowly moving together, Josh’s hands cupping Sam’s face, Sam’s by his sides. Josh felt himself smile into the kiss when Sam exhaled through his nose and placed his hands on Josh’s hips. He opened his lips to let Sam in, and Sam reciprocated, deepening the kiss and wrapping his arms around Josh’s waist with the gentlest moan into Josh’s mouth. That made Josh melt. Completely undone, Josh quickened to a feverish pace, tightening his hold on Sam’s face and pushing his fingers up into his damp hair. Sam groaned again, and Josh kissed him even harder, only pulling away when the corners and bridge of Sam’s glasses crushed into their faces. They pulled apart, giggling as Sam tugged his glasses off, letting them drop to the bed, and draped his hands over Josh’s shoulders.

Without his shoes, Sam was an inch or so shorter than Josh, which gave Josh leverage to pull Sam closer, hold him tighter, and bury his lips and teeth into Sam’s. This certainly wasn’t what Donna had in mind when she had told Josh to gather his rosebuds, was the last coherent thought Josh had before Sam swiveled his foot to bring their hips crashing together. Taking the cue, Josh pried his lips off of Sam’s and began trailing sloppy bruises onto his neck.

        “Josh…” Sam murmured breathlessly, his hands scattering across Josh’s back, before grabbing his fists around the fabric of his jacket, _“Josh.”_

        “Mmm hmm…” Josh responded, content to let his lips stay fused to the salt of Sam’s skin indefinitely.

        “Josh, you don’t figure…” Sam choked out as Josh bit his ear, “I mean, do you think maybe… do you figure we have time for sex?”

On that word, Josh jerked away, leaving glistening bite marks on Sam’s earlobe. He blinked for a second and finally said, “I mean, I don’t figure we have time for _good_ sex.”

Sam nodded and started to go back in for the kiss, but Josh lightly pushed him back and said, “But I’m by no means opposed to mediocre sex.” Sam threw his head back again for another soul-consuming laugh, and Josh seized the opportunity to continue nibbling and kissing the exposed flesh of his throat. Sam let out a contented sigh, closing his eyes and relishing the sensation of Josh’s mouth on him.

        “Josh?” he cooed again after a moment, “Josh, I appreciate the enthusiasm, but I don’t know how I’m supposed to explain how I acquired a neck full of hickeys in the hour and a half between leaving the party and getting on Air Force One.”

        “Also very logical,” Josh said, but didn’t let up.

        “Josh, we’ve waited fifteen years for this, you think we can wait one more cross-country flight?” Sam slid his hands into the back pockets of Josh’s jeans.

        “Not with you doing that!” Josh still didn’t remove his lips from Sam, like he was afraid if he let go, he would fall down. Sam slowly began pulling himself away, letting out quick exhales as he flustered to catch his breath. They looked at each other hungrily, trying to cool down, hands on each other’s shoulders, arms’ length apart.

        “Just promise me that you will _not_ forget where we stopped,” Sam’s eyes were deadly serious, puffs of air still spilling from between his reddened lips.

        “I could never,” Josh assured him.

        “Okay,” Sam said, abruptly pulling himself away and straightening up, “Well, as you can see, I’m behind on my packing, and the sooner we _get on_ the plane the sooner we can _get off,”_ he tweaked a suggestive smile at Josh and started to add a wholly unnecessary, “If you know what I m…”

        “Yes, God, Sam, yes, I know what you mean,” Josh said, leaping into the action of trying to find the will power to go back upstairs.

        “Okay,” Sam said examining the load of papers on his mattress with a newfound contempt.

        “Okay.” Josh said, a hand on the door.

        “See you on the plane.”

        “See you on the plane,” Josh called over his shoulder. But before the door could close all the way behind him, he turned on his heels and ran back to plant another firm, closed-mouth kiss on Sam’s lips. Sam reached his hands over where Josh’s lay against his face.

        “Okay. See you on the plane,” Josh whispered when he broke apart.

He practically skipped down the hall towards the elevators. Catching his reflection in the elevator doors, he noticed that he did in fact look extremely tired and that his lips looked pink and swelled. Apart from that, he noticed that the goofy grin from before had been replaced with a look of a peacefulness he did not recognize, not even from days long gone. His body felt light, but it also felt grounded.

The thought of kissing Joey had made him feel like he did after his second glass of wine, giddy and silly and full of buzzing energy. But _actually_ kissing Sam made him feel like he could be still. Sam made him feel like he didn’t have to hold his breath anymore. Sam made him feel like he could set his shoulders down from their home by his ears. Sam made him feel like he could rest. He didn’t recognize his expression because nobody had ever made him feel that way before.

So when he arrived back to his own room where Donna had just finished their packing, he answered her questions cautiously, but he didn’t get his back up. He shrugged and said he changed his mind and went for a walk. She grilled him all the way to the plane, but he just kept on shrugging and giving her one-word answers in a tone that didn’t contain a hint of defensiveness, so she eventually stopped bothering.

He settled into his seat and pulled his jacket up beside him to use as a pillow, propping his legs on the table before him. He looked out the window and pondered how different the world looked now. How it all made sense now. Less than 24 hours ago, it seemed as though he lived in a universe that was disjointed, imperfect, and unpredictable. But right now, looking out at the faded wash of stars that canopied the tarmac, he was pretty sure he could have been convinced that everything happened for a reason. Every failure to gather rosebuds had happened for a reason, he thought, nudging off his shoes with two satisfying plops. And that reason was Sam.

Sam. Sam, whose belated entrance beckoned him back from his contemplations of the order of the universe. He watched as Sam discreetly snuck in at the last minute once everything was darkened, complaining a little too loudly about a crick his neck as an excuse to rub his hands over the spots Josh had left. Everyone else was too drained to pay him much mind as he sat in the seat across from Josh, leaning his head against the wall, perfectly obstructing the view of those telltale markings. Josh smiled at him as he undid his shoes and placed his feet right by Josh’s, allowing their socks to bump together just enough for nobody else to notice, but to convey the intentionality of the gesture. That same sense of calm radiating from the spot where Sam’s foot had touched his, Josh leaned back and closed his eyes, letting his own feet fall onto Sam’s and stay there.

The next time Josh opened his eyes, they were in the air and he had fallen on to his bunched up jacket beside him. Yawning, he stretched himself up and glanced out the window. Met with only darkness and stars, he turned to his watch and hazarded a guess they were probably somewhere over Nebraska. He let out another yawn as he looked around the cabin, his chest filling with fondness for the sounds of his coworkers’ heavy breathing and muffled snores. His attention was pulled away when he felt a bump against his foot and turned to see Sam, wide awake and gazing over at him behind his glasses.

        “Hey,” Sam said softly.

        “Hey,” Josh responded with a sleepy smile.

        “I love you.”

        “I love you, too.” Josh said back, just loud enough for Sam, but on the inside, he was screaming it down to the unsuspecting, sleeping Midwesterners below. Then, Sam closed his eyes and dipped his head back, the look on his face the perfect reflection of everything Josh had seen on his own expression in the elevator doors. And for that moment, Josh’s universe was the square feet of air surrounding them and everything in between them. And in that moment, his universe was infinite and expanding. And in that moment his universe was a risk that had never been a risk. He had gone out and he gathered something that he had always had. Really, what had happened, he thought, was that he had finally gathered courage it took to find out he’d never needed courage. Watching Sam falling asleep as his own eyes began to drag again, he knew that things were not always going to be this simple. There were going to be excruciatingly difficult moments, unimaginably blissful moments, and moments that challenged them. But right now, in this moment, his universe was as simple as he loved Sam and Sam loved him. And in that moment, his universe was completely and utterly calm.

**Author's Note:**

> I usually write under the head-canon that Josh and Sam have been together all along, but I couldn’t resist the opportunity this episode presented our boys.... whom are not owned by me.


End file.
